My final piece was a creative piece. I really wanted to make something new and different. I ended up deciding on a deck of cards and a pair of dice. These two objects compliment each other because they are both used in many gambling situations or tricks. I relate very closely to my design of the cards because I like performing magic tricks. I think a deck of cards means different things to different people, some view them as it is, just a deck of cards. Some however, view them as I do. A form of life. When performing magic tricks it gives you such a satisfying feeling that is unexplainable.
Process of Creation
While creating these three pieces I was thinking about what I wanted the end project to look like and what it was going to take to get it there. For my normal pencil, I had to think of what it was suppose to look like to be able to edit it appropriately.
Creative Pencil
My creative pencil was a bit different. I knew I wanted to make something that I could relate to (Explained in next paragraph). I made my original pencil base then decided on what I could do to make it different. I finally settled on a pencil, but with a spade on it.
What I Learned
During this project my 3 big take aways are how a graphic designer can connect to their art, how their work represents them, and how to make different and varying pieces of art.
The scope of the project involved using photoshop and adobe aftereffects. It required pre-knowledge about photoshop. The process of the project included the idea, creating it and then exporting it. The idea was making a ball bounce across the screen. The ball however, would look realistic and circular with shading/ lighting. The bounce process would include adding a realistic bounce motion and adding a squash and stretch effect. After the editing was complete, we rendered out our bounce animation and made it into a video. Along the way, I learned how to better animate objects and how to create a project so it can be animated. If I were to do this project over again, I would change my grass color. My grass color wasn't as green as I would've liked it to be at the end. I would keep my ball color and motions the same. My experiences during this project will better prepare me for my future ones because I now know how to better create objects and how to make it more realistic. I thought that this project was overall very helpful because it gave us a chance to incorporate and use different programs to create a pretty neat animation.
Graphic design is a way of expressing yourself. There are many different ways to express yourself. One way is to send a message. Sending a message is very important because it communicates yourself with the viewers. It also creates a connection and helps relate you to the viewers. Graphic design is a form of art. Art doesn't have to be in the form of paint or pencil. It can be in the form of letters or numbers. Art is such a broad area of topic that everyone can be a part of it whether you're an artist or not.
Another personal connection I made during the video is that the design is almost everything. When a design is created, that design isn't JUST a design. It speaks for whatever it represents. I love how any sort of design, can mean whatever you want. It amazes me how one piece of art can connect to anyone because it means different things to different people.
The final connection I made is possible the best one. I love how art and graphic design can connect you to anyone. Although similar to my last connection, I feel that connecting people by itself is rewarding enough to earn its own point. Connecting to people and breaking the ice is always difficult at first. But with graphic design or art, it makes it that much easier. Everyone has a different interpretation and therefore it can connect everyone.
Watching the video taught me a few interesting points. It taught me not what graphic design is, but what being a graphic designer means. It means representing people and your artwork. It also taught me how art and graphic design connects people in ways that I have never previously thought about.
For the commercial video we decided as a group to do an infomercial and everyone in the group participated and contributed with our ideas and thoughts to make and produce our final product. As a group, we came up with a way to make our video entertaining and informational by using the six shot sequence and the three second rule. We used overlays so that when someone was talking, after a 2-3 seconds we should switch to another film of the person or someone else doing something so we don't lose our viewers. The six shot sequence was very helpful to help create our video and be able to make our video look much more professional and top notch. For the video, I made the storyline of the video and made the story board. The video was made to show the simplicity of the watch and how it affects and helps the everyday man/woman. What if your relative or friend was hurt and no one was there to help and you're stuck in traffic? That's a life. A life that has a future and a heartbeat. With the GeoWatch Traveler, that heartbeat can continue to beat on. YOU can be there in seconds and save your friend or relative.
Graphics:
Graphic Design was my branch in the project. I designed the logo, coupon, and whatever else needed to be done. Let's start with the logo. The GeoWatch Logo is made of four circles intersecting one another in the center. Each circle is a different color, and each color has a different meaning. For starters, the colors not only have meanings, but also represent different cultures and the center would be the point where they all meet. I.E. the GeoWatch Traveler brings cultures and people from all around the world together through travel. The color blue represents innovation and technology, but also represents trust. The yellow circle is associated with happiness or joy, all of which and even more can be achieved through the GeoWatch Traveler. The red circle connects to the feeling of passion, or love. Everyone loves things that help the world rather than destroy it, and the GeoWatch Traveler is economically friendly! That's why the last circle is green. Green represents nature, growth, harmony, freshness, safety, and environment. With a simple logo such as ours, it can also mean many different things. Thought and even more thought is what it took to make the logo. It's easy to remember, easy on the eyes, and represents so much! But, none of those points are the best part of the logo. The best part of the logo, is that every person views the logo differently. Each and every color or circle can mean something different to you. It can be a happy memory, a first kiss, or even your first stuffed animal as a kid. This GeoWatch Logo is among the top logos because it's not what we're trying to say, it's what the LOGO's trying to say. The coupon is a much different story. It was hard enough to design everything by Illustrator, but the actual hardship was deciding on how it was going to look. I wanted the coupon to be like the logo. Simple enough to remember, easy on the eyes, and look professional. I must've looked at hundreds of coupons before designing the now current coupon. But the first design, wasn't the last. I made 4-7 coupons before I made the current one. I had to make the informational text at the bottom of the coupons and alter the logo for the coupon. Now, the GeoWatch Traveler is $149.99. So $50 off is 1/3 of the price. But the point I wanted to make, was that the GeoWatch Traveler isn't and wasn't made so the owners of the company could sit back and sip ice tea in the Caribbean, not saying that we don't, but the Traveler was made for something greater. It was made for the people, and not the the money. The Traveler was inspired by us to make the product for the people. With the GeoWatch Traveler, you can be anywhere in seconds and make everyone that owns it lives' so much easier. GeoWatch's future for the company is not to make more money, but rather to help the people. With that goal in mind I decided I was going to make the coupon $50 off. This product was not made the rich, or the poor, but for the people. Everyone can own the GeoWatch Traveler now that it's only a low price of $99.99.
Website Screenshots:
The GeoWatch Website was designed by and coded by Jacob, but the content was written by me. I wrote the disclaimer notice at the bottom of the website thus removing the company from any responsibility of a misuse of our product. I also added in a few sample locations and in the sidebar is a summary and goal of GeoWatch. The website would include the information of the watch, what it was made of, and many more! I describe the product, explain why everyone would need one, and included a detailed description of what the product looks like. All in all, making the GeoWatch product just as important as water.
Animation
The overview of the product is very simple yet elegant. I designed the basic design of the GeoWatch Traveler and Kierstyn revised upon it. I made the watch have a digital screen by making the opacity lower. The GeoWatch design was simple and elegant so we decided to use mine. The Watch was easily designable and could be changed (Colors, text, etc.) easily. With that, the packaging was a breeze. The Watch was changed and recolored to match the packaging.
What I learned
Throughout the year I learned a truckload of skills. I learned how to design, how to make a website, logos, and videos. I was more successful in the field of graphic design and animation so I took on that role in the group project. I used my skills and made a beautiful logo and a professional looking watch. These products required skills in Sketch-Up and Adobe Illustrator. But not all skills are physical. Some skills required for the product would include imagination. I think that going into the branch of e-Communication, imagination was one of my strongest suits. But after finishing one year in e-Communication, I think my imagination was different. Being able to make my ideas real made me imagine differently. I imagined what would a high tech watch look like? What would a travel related logo or commercial look like? With those thoughts in mind, I imagined, and made the logo, coupon, and the watch. I also made the storyboard and helped with the storyline of the video. I was an ISFP. Meaning that I am an introvert. But that's not the interesting part. When we took our "What Animal Are You?" quiz, I got a lion. Going into the quiz I thought for sure I was going to be an otter or a golden retriever. But while I was answering and rating my preferences, I noticed that none of the questions connected to me. I thought that the questions had nothing to do with me and I couldn't care less about some of them. An ISFP got a lion. Even our sub found it interesting. Introverts are usually quiet, and extroverts are usually the ones that end up getting lion. But during our project I tried to take on that lion role, and the end product turned out fairly well. Though I would've preferred to be an otter or golden retriever the way through, I still found that being a lion, weather I enjoyed it or not, was very helpful.
The process if making the end product took a lot of work. It took a lot of sketching and try/fail before making it to what out is today. After making the final products (Watch), it still took a lot of revising before it looked the way we wanted it to.
If I could do something differently next time it would be the planning. The planning during this project wasn't great and I ended up having to stay after to finish someone else's work. However, if I could do this project again, I would keep the logo the same. I really enjoyed my end product with the logo and wouldn't change a thing about it.
We made this teleportation device to help the people. It would make everyones' lives so much easier if they would just give the GeoWatch Traveler a chance.
During the process of making the butterfly, I learned how to change different colors and add different types of effects to the picture. Changing from Illustrator to Photoshop was an easy transition. I prefer Photoshop over Illustrator because of the easier navigation of tools and the wide variety of choices that come with Photoshop. I think Photoshop is the best use for making photos much better by putting in, or taking out objects. I think Illustrator has a much more different use. Illustrator is used for more creating objects and shapes such as logos.
While I was making the Northwest overlay, I learned how to clean out the inside of a text and place a picture in the background. After finishing the Northwest overlay, it gave a very clean and professional finish to the project. If I were to do this project again in Illustrator I think I would have more trouble than photoshop. Once again, making the transition from Illustrator to Photoshop was fairly easy especially for this project. Putting overlays into photos with backgrounds can be very difficult in Illustrator, but in Photoshop there was a quick and easy way to do it.
The ONW Compass was among one of the easier ones to make. It only required a few clicks and touch ups to make a very professional and clean look to it. I learned how to change the opacity from bolder to fading. While I was messing with the layers, I also learned how placing different pictures on different layers could give a much different look to the project. For example if I were to place the ONW letters in the front and the ONW Compass in the back it would give a much more awkward look to it than having the ONW Compass in the front. I think that using Photoshop instead of Illustrator was a lot easier for this project.
This project was by far the most difficult out of the four. It required much more steps and more in depth explanations to do a good job on it. Using more than two pictures to fit onto one singular one proved more difficult than it seems. Especially since I tried to make it look more professional and clean. However, as difficult as this project was, I learned a few valuable skills.I learned how to trim photos in a specific shape rather than a square crop by using the layer mask tool. I also learned how to use the clone tool to delete specific parts of a picture. I think for this specific project I would've liked to use Illustrator to clean up some pictures before moving to Photoshop to finish it.
The color behind my personal logo is revolved around two colors, black and white. It makes the white more dominate and clean looking and placing it onto a black background makes it darker. The two colors are complete opposites. A dark and a light. The two colors complement each other and make the other brighter/darker in comparison. I chose black and white as the two colors associated with the logo because I've always thought that choosing two colors such as black and white made a cleaner and much more professional outcome and final project.
The shape of the logo is circular placed in a square background. The square background makes it more stable and solid. While the circle makes it seem more flexible and moveable. I chose the circle as the base logo shape because it seemed very moveable and easily changed. The idea of making the circle only consist of an outline and not filled in was because of my idea. I wanted to make the circle, not a circle. I made three lines cutting through around the outer ring of the circle. The cuts are located at the points when the lines of the letter cut in and out. The first one is located at the cut in at the top of the letter "B." The second and third cut ins are at the top and bottom of the letter "N." I decided to make cut ins to make my shape unlike others. To add an unique touch.
Throughout making my personal logo, I've learned how to make claw marks by simply drawing lines and changing the line and adding an outline color that is complementary to the other. This logo can affect and mean something differently to every person. To me, it resembles a solid, but still flexible lifestyle. But also at the same time, open to changing and new ideas. The square makes me feel like it's a solid lifestyle and the circle makes me feel very flexible. But the most important part is the cut ins around the circle, those make me feel very open to new ideas and adapting to a new lifestyle.
The process of this project was first creating many thumbnail sketches, then choosing from one, or all of them, and creating it in Adobe Illustrator. If I were to do this project again, I would keep the idea of a circle as the base of the logo. However, if I were to change something and do something new, I would like to try using different colors. Some that don't complement each other and also, use more colors.
Pathfinder helps create shapes that cannot be created under normal circumstances. The shape to the right are the shapes I have created with Pathfinder. Pathfinder lets you utilize a whole new skill set of editing and illustrating. It allows you to edit the points of the shapes and move the shape to the back or to the front, or to delete the center intersection shape. During the process of creating new shapes with pathfinder, I have learned how to take out the intersection of two or more shapes, combine shapes, and take out of put in a shape. Using pathfinder I was able to create a vast variety of shapes and fillings. The most important skill that I have learned during this, is how to subtract from a shape. This specific skill allows me to unlock thousands of new shapes besides the ones created by adding or subtracting the intersection. Subtracting from a shape creates a very complex and simply amazing looking shape.
